I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.

More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.

It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.

I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 months ago
    • “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism”

    I’ve been hearing substantial amounts of “If you’re not voting for Biden then you’re implicitly endorsing Fascism”. Perhaps this is just reflexive push-back?

    • “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic”

    If you’ve ever actually dealt with babies before - with one particular anatomical difference that makes changing a diaper more exciting - there’s not much about them that screams “gender” until parents make a big show of color-coding. And there’s definitely a lot of goofy phrenology-tier bullshit that goes into “Blue is For Boys and Pink is for Girls”.

    There’s definitely a degree of transphobia that goes into people who are insecure about their boy baby wearing girl colors. And I’ve seen quite a few dime-story psychiatrists insist that infants can be “turned” gay based on insufficiently gendered living spaces or treatments. The most consistently crazy claim I’ve seen is that when male babies are breast fed for too long, they become “sissified”, which can range from becoming cis-homo to trans-hetero depending on who you ask.

    It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian

    Well, let’s maybe take a step back and first ask which one of these people are endorsing the bombing of an abortion clinic.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      8 months ago

      Oh my god. Tumblr’s reading comprehension is better than this.

      I’m not saying your political opinions are the same as those of the right. I’m saying you use the same bad faith tactics that they do to spread them.

      Namely, you both believe that nothing short of perfection on the first go is worth pursuing, and anyone who dares to pursue it is at best wasting their efforts and at worst a traitor to the cause.